Site Mobile Navigation

Zaire Rebels Begin Attack On Key City of Kisangani

After a three-week siege of Kisangani but little fighting there, Zairian rebels attacked tonight, setting off a panic among Government troops and civilians alike.

In the capital, Kinshasa, associates of President Mobutu Sese Seko and Western diplomats said the assault had begun with a mortar barrage after nightfall, followed by shooting inside the city and a convergence of rebel fighters on Kisangani, the country's third-largest city, from the northeast and southeast.

''They are in the town,'' said an alarmed associate of Mr. Mobutu. ''There is a lot of gunfire. The battle has begun.'' The longtime dictator has been in France receiving treatment for cancer.

For weeks people here, from ordinary citizens to senior officials, have speculated that if Kisangani fell, Mr. Mobutu's Government would collapse with it.

''Do I think there is something going on?'' asked one Western diplomat. ''Definitely. It is hard to say exactly what, but it would seem like the last chapter on Kisangani.''

Diplomats said there were also reports of chaotic fighting between Zairian forces deployed to defend Kisangani, and panic among civilians. One report said fleeing troops had swamped one of Kisangani's two airports, setting off a firefight with the Serbian mercenaries hired by the Government to defend the city.

''Around 7 P.M. all of the mercenaries disappeared from the hotel they were staying in, and next thing we knew all of the airplanes at the airport were in flames,'' said one United Nations official who had spoken to international relief workers in Kisangani. ''There have been bombs going off and lots of gunfire. According to our information, the city is being looted right now.''

A Zairian official speaking on condition that he not be identified said tonight: ''All of the generals have left Kisangani, by boat, by ground, by whatever means. Who knows what will happen here tomorrow?''

United Nations officials here said about 20 staff members who were in Kisangani to restart efforts to aid war refugees and displaced people were believed to be safe.

The reverberations were also felt in the capital. Twice already in this decade, political turbulence in Zaire has led to bouts of wildly destructive looting by soldiers in Kinshasa. And with Government troops deserting one battlefield after another in the countryside, many fear a new loss of control in the capital.

In recent days, the Government troops and mercenaries defending Kisangani had made their first significant offensive moves in weeks, attacking rebel units on the Bafwasende road and reportedly killing a number of the insurgents.

While the Government boasted this week that the war was taking a new direction after more than five months of reverses, diplomats said the rebels appeared to be merely biding their time, making deep inroads elsewhere in the country while moving heavy reinforcements into position around Kisangani.

Rather than focusing on Kisangani, rebels were advancing at will deep into the southern province of Shaba, one of Zaire's richest and most populous regions. Likewise, recent rebel seizures of the cities of Kindu, Kongolo and Manono make a thrust into lightly defended Kasai Province in central Zaire ever more likely.

East Kasai's huge diamond reserves have been the largest source of revenue for Mr. Mobutu and his Government. In a sign that the local authorities there expect a rebel takeover soon, the leader of the province's largest state-owned diamond producer declared this week that he was willing to work with the rebels' leader, Laurent Kabila.

''What is happening in Shaba and Kasai is probably more important than two-thirds of the other stuff you are hearing about,'' one Western diplomat said. Added to what the rebels already control, these two provinces would extend their authority to well over half of Zaire's territory and most of its wealth.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

But from the start Kisangani, the center of the Government's war effort, has been seen as the rebels' biggest strategic and political prize. Since Zaire's independence from Belgium in 1960, Kisangani -- formerly Stanleyville -- has been an incubator of anti-Government rebellions.

The rebels know that if they gain control of the city they will dominate the all-important Zaire River, a major commercial thoroughfare.

Until tonight, the rebels were believed to be carefully laying the groundwork for an attack on Kisangani, instead of rushing in.

Western intelligence reports said that to neutralize the hundreds of Serbian mercenaries, the rebels had begun moving in heavy artillery supplied by neighboring Rwanda and Angola or captured from the Zairian forces.

''Previously the rebels' heaviest weapon was the mortar, but now they've got all kinds of stuff, from 100-millimeter artillery to multiple rocket launchers,'' said one Western military analyst. ''The mercenaries defending the airport at Kisangani have taken deaths and have killed a bunch of rebels, but the equation will change dramatically once the artillery shows up.''

According to Western intelligence estimates, Angola, long a target of Zairian subversion, has ferried as many as 2,000 troops from its 24th Regiment, many of them exiled Zairian rebels, to Rwanda, where they have joined the rebellion.

Zaire's war began in October when Zairian ethnic Tutsi rose up against the Government with heavy assistance from Rwanda's Tutsi-led Government. Rwanda blames Zaire for arming Hutu refugees from Rwanda's 1994 ethnic civil war.

Why the rebels chose to attack before the artillery was in place is uncertain.

But Mr. Kabila may have been concerned about mounting diplomatic pressure for a cease-fire and international calls for help for Hutu refugees stranded near Kisangani.

All along, one of the priorities of Mr. Kabila's rebellion has been the fevered pursuit of the hundreds of thousands of Hutu still in Zaire, many of whom are believed to have taken part in the 1994 massacres of Rwanda's Tutsi minority.

Diplomats and international aid agencies working to save at least 100,000 sick and weakened Hutu who have gathered in Ubundu now worry that the refugees will become a rebel target.

To prevent that outcome, France has revived efforts to rally an international force to intervene in Zaire. But Washington and the European Union have resisted the idea.

Even before the fighting for Kisangani began, many in the Zairian elite had begun to take the Government's collapse as a foregone conclusion.

In one conversation held in the presence of a foreign journalist, members of Mr. Mobutu's own entourage held a lively debate over the merits of a coup against the President.

''So far it is at the stage of 'don't you want to go tell Mobutu to step down?' '' one Western diplomat said of the coup talk.